


heaven is overrated

by DreamingStarkly



Series: one more troubled soul [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Asexual Relationship, Asexuality Spectrum, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Murder of original character, Polyamory, Some plot but mostly angst, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-19
Updated: 2015-05-19
Packaged: 2018-03-31 05:55:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3966898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamingStarkly/pseuds/DreamingStarkly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'It gets easier,' Dream Fisk had told her. </p><p>'He was right,' Karen thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	heaven is overrated

**Author's Note:**

> Because Karen’s Fisk dream definitely foreshadowed more angry murderous Karen. Also because I’m a sadistic bastard who loves morally ambiguous lady characters. Don’t worry, there will still be Avocado Family cuddles. Just a bigger dose of angst to go along with it. 
> 
> Content warning for descriptions of Daredevil-level violence, some self-harm (punching a mirror).

____________

 

He wasn’t supposed to find out. Not like this.

Karen was cold, a familiar numbness that sucked out the warmth from her extremities and focused all sensation in the iron weight in her chest and the barely dried, tacky blood splattered on her face.

Karen slowly placed the knife on the counter, as if removing the weapon from her fingers would make the evidence of what she’d done disappear.

Foggy didn’t move. He just stared, mouth agape.

He wasn’t supposed to find out.

 

____________

 

_18 Hours Earlier_

 

Karen woke to a phone spewing early 2000s music. Who the hell uses _Drops of Jupiter_ as an alarm, anyway? Matthew Murdock, of course.

She buried her face in her pillow, which was Foggy’s arm at the moment. Matt was curled up against her back. Foggy shifted, reached over her, and slapped Matt’s shoulder.

“Turn that damn thing off, Murdock,” Foggy muttered. “It’s a Sunday, for fuckssake.”

Matt mumbled something into Karen’s spine, but eventually rolled over to silence the music emanating from his phone. The poor guy was probably still half asleep, because he was snoring against Karen’s hair almost as soon as he turned back and threw an arm around her waist. Karen watched as Foggy lifted his head to peer blearily at Matt. The man rolled his eyes and dropped his head back onto his pillow.

Karen stayed awake as Foggy drifted back to sleep, savoring the easy relaxation that came with cuddling between her two favorite people.

This... _thing_ happened pretty infrequently. Like, maybe three times in as many months. Mostly it was Matt who declined hanging out. In fact, he had insisted skipping out last night as well, but Karen managed to manipulate his guilt complex just enough to force him to eat sushi and watch the _Paranormal Activity_ movies with her and Foggy at Foggy’s apartment. Granted, the past two weeks brought a whirlwind of cases, as Fisk’s company (ies?) was barely holding onto a string and a bunch of Hell’s Kitchen residents had mustered up the courage to sue the shit out of all those responsible. The three of them worked late nights and when you’re pulling 15 hours around the same people every day, it was nice to have some alone time. Even if it was just to pass out only to wake up and do it all over again. It was worth it, though. They were helping people, punishing those who thought could get away with taking advantage of the most vulnerable.

“Justice never sleeps!” Foggy had said the last time Matt declined their invitation to go out.

Maybe it was for the best, Karen wondered. While it was nice to have friends (Boyfriends? Partners without sexual benefits? She’s pretty sure she’s heard the term ‘squishes’ once…) that she could call up when she was feeling lonely, there were some reasons why some distance was a good thing.

Her still-frequent nightmares were one reason. Out of the three times she’d slept at the boys’ respective places, she only woke herself up in a panic once. Matt and Foggy pressed for details after they helped calm her down and remind her that she was safely in bed with them—not in a dark basement with a gun glued to her hands, the trigger white hot and the acrid smell of gunpowder flooding her nose. And the rage, the rage that made her feel—

She didn’t tell them that. She just said it was about Fisk. They were obviously worried about her, but they knew that they couldn’t do much other than give her a glass of water and stay up with her until she finally passed out again. The next morning Matt gently brought up the possibility of going to a psychiatrist, but she brushed him off. They may be getting more business lately, but she wasn’t being paid enough to be going to a shrink.

Her returning to freelance journalism was another reason. Matt and Foggy were antsy enough about her work with Ben, so she didn’t want to worry them further. She didn’t tell them she started looking into the distribution of deadly designer drugs that Ben had documented for the last ten years. He didn’t have much in way of evidence, mostly testimony from junkies, but there were a couple of things that had raised his—and now her—interest. Certain new drugs kept popping up in the same circles, connected to the same funnels, like clockwork. Some of the testimonies hinted that they were coming directly from pharmaceutical companies.

As these things usually went, she was suspecting one of the mobs. After the heroin thing, it made sense. In the last week, she met up with one of Ben’s sources, David. He told her about Nugenex. He was a lab assistant at the pharmaceutical company two years previously. At least, that was before he consented to being a lab rat in their illegal heroin addiction trials. He, of course, got addicted. The trial, of course was a failure. David told her what he told Ben, that he recognized one of his colleagues distributing the new drugs on the streets. He said that she still worked with Nugenex, and that she had short brown hair and an umbrella tattoo behind her ear.

Given that David’s memory was patchy as he related his story, she decided to test his memory. On Friday, she managed to successfully infiltrate a student research group receiving a tour at Nugenex’s Manhattan office. _Ben would be proud,_ she had thought. They briefly visited the Research  & Development section, where their guide introduced the group to the handful of chemists in the lab. Karen noticed that one of the scientists had a misshapen balloon tattoo that looked a lot like an umbrella behind her ear. Her hair was blonde, but those were definitely brown roots.

The next step was to talk with David again, maybe to try get him to remember how often Dr. Weiss visited the heroin dens in Hell’s Kitchen. She was formulating details on her plan to get in touch with David when Matt’s arm tightened around her waist and his breathing changed, signaling that he was awake. He didn’t speak, just laid still with his face buried in her hair. She gently stroked his hand in response. She could feel her hair move in time with his breathing. Part of her wondered whether or not it tickled him. Foggy complained whenever he got a mouthful of her hair, and there was a running joke between them about him finding her hair literally _everywhere_. She teased him right back, asking him how he could tell whose long blond hairs they were.

Matt, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to get enough of it, which was cute. Playing with it, running his fingers along the plaits when she braided it. Burying his face in it and just breathing was his favorite, though. Matt was hardly affectionate in the conventional ways, which was 100% fine with Karen. He wasn’t huge into kissing, or even hugging. He liked little things, like tracing the bones on Foggy’s hand or letting Karen tap rhythms into his thigh when they watched dumb Disney movies.

Eventually nature called. Matt sighed as he rolled out of bed. Karen watched him as his hand traced the edge of the bed, and then the wall, guiding him towards the bathroom. His steps were sure, as if he’d memorized the room already.

Matt moving around obviously woke up Foggy, who grumbled about losing feeling in his arm. Karen let him drag her closer to his chest so she wasn’t putting all of her head weight onto his bicep. She hadn’t admitted it to either of them yet, but she preferred Foggy as her de facto pillow. He wore super soft cotton shirts to bed, for one. Foggy made a sound of content and rested his hand between her shoulder blades, lazily stroking her back with his thumb. Foggy was definitely the most physical of the three, for many reasons. However, Karen was pleasantly surprised to find that he could pick up on her unspoken cues for touch, or when she didn’t want to be touched.

She wondered if being around Matt for so long had anything to do with that.

Matt returned, coming out of the bathroom. Instead of heading back to bed, he walked towards the door. He paused for a moment with his hand on the door handle.

“You awake?” he murmured.

“I am,” Karen told him, her voice low. “Foggy’s not.” Matt’s mouth twitched into a smile.

“Breakfast?” he asked.

“No, thanks,” she replied. He shrugged and then let himself out into the living room.

Karen kept herself from asking if he wanted help, she knew Foggy kept the milk and cereal in the same place. He chastised her about a week ago for putting the milk inside the fridge door instead of on the middle shelf. Matt wasn’t over that night, but Foggy reminded her to put things back where she found them.

She eventually drifted back to that space between waking and sleeping until Foggy stirred, giving her a hug and then plodding off to the bathroom as well. After making a bowl of cereal, she joined Matt on the couch. He was listening to NPR on the radio settled on the windowsill. She rested  her feet on Matt’s lap and listened to a re-run of _Car Talk_ as she ate the dry Wheaties with her fingers.

“Why do you two insist on cereal instead of a proper Sunday breakfast?” Foggy complained once he entered the living room. “Heathens.”

“Because we are starving and you take forever to wake up,” Matt replied with a wry quirk of his brow. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, usually a sign that he was at ease. He didn’t do it much, so it was apparently a good day.

“Karen slept in, too,” he pointed out before heading towards the kitchen. “I’m making eggs.”

“I’ll have mine scrambled,” Matt said.

“Who says I’m making _you_ eggs?”

“Don’t put cheese in mine,” Karen requested with a grin.

Foggy heaved a sigh. “ _Heathens_.”

Foggy eventually brought out three plates of perfectly seasoned and fluffy eggs (he said the trick was heavy cream and chives), and coffee. They squished together side by side onto the couch to eat and to collectively lament about Tom Magliozzi’s passing. Afterwards, Foggy and Matt did the dishes, leaving Karen to lounge on the couch.

Karen didn’t want to think about the tiny voice in the back of her head telling her that this whole... _thing_ was too good to be true.

So she smiled at the sound of her boys bickering over the clank of dishes and let their happy teasing warm her bones along with her coffee.  


____________

 

“No, I want it transferred _now_. I’m gonna be outta here before sunrise.”  

Karen’s heart pounded in her ears. She listened as David paced the warehouse floor. Pretending to be unconscious wasn’t hard when your attacker was holding a knife. A knife she now knew was going to be used to slit her throat. He said something about bullets not dissolving in the solution. That was after he took a hit of cocaine, probably to psych himself up to kill a defenseless blonde waif.

“Yeah, yeah. She’s being taken care of. Well, I’ll do that as soon as I know the money is sent. I ain’t killin’ her ‘til I know—” He paused, his back to her. He took the phone away from his ear and looked at the screen. “ _Thank_ you. Okay. I’ll call you when it’s done. It was good doing business with you, Dr. Weiss.”

Karen closed her eyes as he turned around, forcing her breathing to be slow and shallow. She could hear David’s incoherent muttering as he hefted her up to sitting. Luckily, the idiot had only bound her wrists in front of her. Rookie mistake.

As soon as he reach his hand to pull her head back and exposed her throat, Karen threw her head backwards, ramming him in the jaw. She wriggled around and grabbed the knife that had fallen from his grasp. In the following scuffle, David managed to get a swing at her cheek. It wasn’t enough to stun her. The heroin had withered his strength to nothing. Besides, she had what she needed.

She drove the knife into David’s chest. And again. David’s yell was cut off, and he tried grabbing her neck, but only succeeded in falling. She was pulled down with him. His hand grappled towards the knife again. She pushed it between his ribs this time. And again. Until David’s nails released her neck and fell limply to the ground. Until his horrible gurgling cut off. It was quiet, then. Karen could only hear her own ragged breathing, the roar in her ears.

 _It gets easier_ , Dream Fisk had told her.

 _He was right_ , Karen thought absently as she pulled out the knife. Blood poured even more heavily from the wound. She watched for a moment with a vague sense of curiosity. Was he still alive? Blood would stop flowing when the heart ceased beating eventually, right?

She wasn’t sure how long she stood over David, watching the blood drain from his body. Part of her higher functions finally kicked in, edging on urgency of _what are you going to do?_

She used the knife to cut through the rope around her wrists and ankles. Perhaps it was just her luck that David had already figured out the how-to-dispose-a-body bit before he came to kill her, because about half an hour later she had lugged his body into the barrel he kept in his truck, next to huge jugs of acid. Before she added David into it, Karen rolled the barrel near one of the open grates in the warehouse, and then carried the jugs to place them beside it. The acid smelled weird. Like nutmeg. She guessed it was probably good for covering up the acid smell. After her attacker was successfully stuffed into the barrel, Karen pulled on the mask and gloves she found in David’s truck. Carefully, methodically, she poured most of the stock of acid over David’s body. She used the rest to scrub out the blood stains on the floor.

She waited, and waited. She checked every half hour or so. The stuff seemed to be working alarmingly quickly, and she had to shove down her nausea when she thought about how _she_ was supposed to be in there.

It felt like forever when she decided the vat of liquid looked did its job. It was heavy work, but Karen wasn’t as weak as she looked. She tilted the barrel over the stormdrain, wary of backsplash as she poured acid and dissolved human into the sewers of New York. Part of her felt bad for dumping toxic waste into public sewers, but then she figured it probably wasn’t the worst thing to enter the city’s plumbing system.

The harder part was figuring out what to do with the truck. After a moment of staring at the nutmeg concoction swirl into oblivion, Karen decided that she’d sell it to a decently shady car dealer. Wouldn’t be too hard to find in this town. For now, she’d leave it here.

She needed to change.

The office was closest, only a couple blocks away, and she had begun to leave a clean change of clothes there.  She did her best to wipe off the blood on her face and hands, but there was only one rag. She also needed to clean and dispose of the knife. Karen carefully wrapped it in the rag and slipped it into her hoodie pocket. Karen pulled her hood up to cover her face, and took one last look at the room before hurrying out the door.

No one saw her, though Karen could swear something was watching her. She picked up her pace, her heart thumping dully in her ears as the office building came into view. She was surprised that her fingers didn’t fumble on the keys as she let herself in.

 _I can wash my hair off in the sink_ , she thought absently as she climbed the steps. _And the knife._ _Pretty sure we have bleach in the kitchen..._

Karen was so preoccupied with her plans to erase all physical evidence of what had just happened, she didn’t realize the office light was already on before she opened the door.

Almost as soon as she reached her desk, Foggy’s voice as he rounded the corner from his office froze her to her bones. “Hey Karen, what are you doing here so—”

 

____________

 

_Am I, Franklin Nelson, doomed to only have friends who regularly find themselves covered in someone else’s blood?_

Maybe it was the fact that he’d already been through a _I think I just stumbled into my best friend’s violent secret life_ moment that didn’t make him run for the door. Maybe it was also all those other times he showed up at Matt’s place after seeing a Youtube video of the Daredevil getting into a particularly brutal fight and having to clean the guy up. At least his stitching was better than a blind man’s. He knew that fashion design class wouldn’t go to waste.

“Fuck,” he breathed, taking a slow step towards her. “Karen, are you hurt?” It didn’t look like it. Again, someone _else’s_ blood. A...a _lot_ of someone else’s blood, now that he thinks about it. And whatever she put on her desk was wrapped in a bloody rag.

Karen was silent for a moment, her stare cold and empty.

“You should leave,” she said, as if her dark hoodie and jeans didn’t have these evil-looking darker stains.

“The hell I’m—” His voice got that high hysterical edge, and Foggy had to stop himself. He inhaled, forcing himself to remain calm. “What happened?” Karen looked away and moved behind her desk. Foggy could see her hands tremble as they reached for the desk light to turn it on. She opened one of the drawers and pulled out a pair of pants and a blouse.

“Take a guess,” she said, still not looking at him as she walked towards the bathroom. Foggy automatically followed her.

“Karen, if someone hurt you…” He winced, knowing that he totally sounded like he was skirting around the elephant in the room. “If...if _you’ve_ hurt someone, you need to—”

The bathroom door shut in his face. The simultaneous click told him she locked it. Fuck. _Fuck_.

He listened as clothes rustled, and then as Karen turned on a water faucet.

“Please talk to me. I can’t...I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me,” Foggy told her over the sound of water splashing against the bathroom sink. Nothing.

Karen, in too many ways, was still a mystery to him. She had every trapping of this girl next door, and part of him still rolled the _out of my league_ mantra over and over again in his brain. For godssakes, he spent a good part of Sunday morning with Karen dozing in his arms.

But on the other hand, the first thing he knew about the woman was that one night she had woken up with blood on her hands and a dead colleague in her apartment. Obviously, they’d already determined that incident wasn’t her fault. But sometimes there was this hardness to her, this bitterness that Foggy couldn’t quite understand. He guessed that she had some other trauma in her life, something that made her eyes fog over sometimes when their cases were violent or messy. Some kind of old hurt that kept her from trusting other people. He could see it in Matt, too.

He stood there, considering the possibility that he might have to wait until morning when Karen was too hungry and couldn’t stay in their tiny office bathroom any longer. Just as he moved to sit by the doorway, he heard a small sound over the running faucet. Immediately followed by a loud _crash_.

“ _Fuck_ , Karen!” he shouted, pounding on the door. “Let me in, _now_!” He was ready to attempt to break down the door when he heard the click of the door unlocking. His hand scrambled for the handle and he swung the door open.

Karen was slumped against the wall beside the door, her hand covering her eyes. The side of her hand was streaked red, bloody. The floor was littered with broken glass. Foggy noted the shattered mirror and swore again. He grabbed the roll of paper towels, ripping a piece off and dampening it under the faucet, squirting it with some of the antibacterial foam soap. When he turned back to Karen, he tried to be as gentle as possible as he reached out to pry her injured hand from her face.

“Please?” He hated the anxiety that bubbled up, waiting for her to hit him or bolt.

Karen did neither, and allowed him to take her hand. Her eyes were still downcast, and her face was wet with tears. There weren’t any slivers of glass in the wound, so Foggy went to work cleaning the scratches.

When he was finished, he wiped away some of the dried blood on her other hand, her face, her neck. He tried very, very hard not to think about the fact that it wasn’t hers. He tossed the paper towel into the waste basket beside the sink and touched her arm, pressing her towards the door. “Go sit down, I’ll sweep this up.”

Karen didn’t answer, but it was a small relief to see her obey. He hoped that the fact that she wasn’t running out the door meant that she was going to tell him what the hell this was all about. At least, the time it took to sweep up the broken mirror (as if they needed any more bad luck around here) and get rid of the bloody paper towels would give her time to decide.

After a trip to the dumpster, he returned to his office. Karen was still sitting in one of the chairs in front of his desk. He pulled the other closer, facing hers, and sat down. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

He studied her face, hoping desperately she wouldn’t lie to him. “What happened?”

Karen swallowed, then looked up.

“Client confidentiality still applies, right?” she said, her voice quiet, frightened.

Foggy frowned. “If you want to speak to me as an attorney, yes.”

Karen let out a shaky breath. “Okay, yeah.” She wiped her nose. “That might make this easier.” Foggy waited quietly as Karen mustered her courage. “I, um, I’ve been pursuing this lead on my own time. Designer drugs have been circulating Hell’s Kitchen. Nasty stuff, highly addictive but they’ve all killed people after, like, the second or third dose. Ben was tracking it a few years ago. I took some of Ben’s notes and decided to check it out myself. One of the junkies he’d talked to used to work at this, uh, pharmaceutical company. Nugenex. He said one of the distributors in the streets was an old colleague of his. So I checked it out, pretended to be a student. Got some info about their R&D section, but nothing substantial.

Karen paused in her story, chewed on her lip for a moment before continuing. “I guess...I wasn’t as careful as I should have been, because I was about to catch up with Ben’s source and the next thing I know I was being shoved into the back of a truck. I mean, even Fisk waited a while to see if we were a real threat,” she joked weakly. “These guys are assholes. Incompetent assholes.”

She continued to tell him how David, Ben’s source, had returned to work for Nugenex for the hush money. He had been ordered to take her to an abandoned warehouse to kill and dispose of her. Even though Foggy suspected by that part of the story that she probably killed David, it still came as a cold shock to hear her describe it. And then, just to make everything even better, she told him how, exactly, she got rid of the body.

She stopped speaking after that, and let the uneasy silence fill the room. Finally, Foggy knew he had to say something.

“You acted out of self-defense,” Foggy told her, privately relieved about that fact. “You destroyed the body in a panic. I’ll talk with Matt, we can figure out a good way to get you out of this mess. And maybe connect Nugenex to drug trafficking on top of everything.”

Foggy was surprised that Karen seemed to deflate instead of perk up. “You can’t tell him,” she whispered.

His stomach dropped to his feet. He knew where this was going. “Karen.”

“Please.”

Perfect. Wonderful. Both of his best friends wanted him to keep their secret lives secret from each other. This was literally a nightmare.

Foggy licked his lips. This wasn’t going to end well, either. Matt wasn’t stupid, something would tip him off eventually. And Foggy’s heart would betray him before he he could even try to lie about something this big. But he couldn’t tell Karen that. Shit.

“I—” He swallowed. “You have the privilege to keep this solely between us, I can’t break that promise. But I have to tell you, if the police are told that David is missing, if they find any evidence that connects to you to David, there’s going to be an investigation. They might figure things out. Matt would figure things out.”

“I can’t worry about that right now.” Her voice was strained. Foggy realized that she was in no position to think about the consequences any more tonight. Or morning. Hell, it was probably close to dawn.

“Okay,” Foggy agreed. “Okay. We’ll talk more about this later.” He hesitated, then stood. “Lemme get you some water.” Before he could move, however, Karen’s hand snapped out to grab his wrist. Her expression was so broken, so afraid. Foggy accepted the unspoken need, kneeled in front of her, and pulled her into his arms. His heart twisted unpleasantly as her breathing verged on sobs, but never quite got there.

“It’s going to be okay, Karen,” he murmured, wishing he could do more than just hug her and be an attorney. “I promise. I got you outta this kinda shit before, remember?”

Granted, she didn’t _actually_ kill anyone last time. Thankfully she didn’t point that out, she just kept her face buried in his neck.

Eventually, business hours were about to start and they had to prepare for the work day before Matt walked in.

The first few hours were normal, like Matt didn’t suspect a thing. Foggy made their coffee as usual, Karen took some calls, and Matt argued about which of the cases they should take pro bono. Completely normal Monday.  

All good things come to an end, however, because when Karen left to grab a sandwich from the grocer across the street, Matt cornered Foggy in the kitchen. Matt didn’t even give Foggy the benefit of weaseling out of a confrontation. He went straight to the point.

“I can smell blood,” Matt said, his voice low. “On Karen.”

Foggy ground his teeth. He knew it. _Fucking supersenses_ , he thought. But dammit if he was going to let Matt know Karen’s secret before she knew his. If anything, Karen invoked her right to confidentiality. Matt never did. At least, not in any legal jargon.

“You know what happened.” It wasn’t a question. Matt planted a hand on Foggy’s shoulder, his lips in that deadly serious frown. “Foggy, if Karen did something...if something’s wrong, we need to—”

“You need to tell her.”

Matt fell silent for a moment, confused, until he caught onto Foggy’s meaning.

“Foggy—” Matt warned.

“ _Tell. Her_ ,” Foggy snarled, his anger overcoming his fear that Matt might totally hate him for this. “Or I swear I’ll do it myself.” They’d been through enough fucking secrets, and he was not going to be the fucking cover for _both_ of them.

Matt’s hand dropped back to his side like he’d been stung. Yeah, he was angry now, too. “What does this have do with...Daredevil?”

“Nothing, but—” Foggy tried to formulate his words right. “I’m not going to be in the middle of this. You owe her the truth.”

Foggy could see it in Matt’s face, the anxiety and frustration, the need to demand what happened to Karen. But Foggy stood his ground, glaring Matt down.

“I’m glaring you down,” he told his partner solemnly. Matt scoffed, but his defenses seemed to slip a little.

“Something really bad happened, didn’t it?”

“Talk to her,” Foggy told him. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll come with. I’m already tangled in both your messes, I should make sure nothing else gets fucked up.”

Matt tilted his head back, shoulders slumping.

“Alright, let’s get this over with.”

The confession part wasn’t very exciting. They were cramped in Foggy’s part of of the office, but his was the only one with extra chairs, and at least it wasn’t the table where they interrogated Karen the first time. Foggy sat anxiously on the edge of his desk while Matt told Karen about his double life. Mostly Karen asked a few questions (the regular ones: when, where, how, and why) and Matt answered them honestly. It wasn’t the screamfest that it was with him and Foggy.

“Why are you telling me this now?” she asked, dully. She glanced at Foggy, and he couldn’t help but feel that it was accusatory. Karen looked worn out, and Foggy felt a pang at putting her through all of this right on top of what happened last night. He looked at Matt, who tilted his head towards Foggy, probably catching onto his worry.

Matt’s voice was even, careful. “I smelled blood as soon as I walked into the office. At first I thought one of you might have been hurt, but when I couldn’t recognize who’s—who’s blood it was…”

Karen swallowed, staring resolutely at her hands hanging limply between her thighs. Foggy wanted desperately to  reach out to her.

Matt took another deep breath. Foggy saw his fingers tighten around his cane. “Foggy didn’t tell me anything, for the record. I know the knife that was used is in here, that someone cleaned it with bleach. Karen, if it was self-defense, there are options. We—”

Karen barked out a laugh. “That’s what Foggy said.”

“Then you know—”

“I don’t want to go to trial. There is no body. I destroyed it. Liquified it and poured it down a drain.” Karen’s grin was bitter. “ _Habeas corpus_ , right? All there’s left to do is to sell his car to the nearest dealership that doesn’t check registrations.”

With every word, Foggy’s hair began to stand on end. He was afraid of Matt after his confession, but this was. This was different.

Karen stood up abruptly. “You don’t have to be involved, either of you. I can—I can pick up my things and leave. You can call the police on me. Neither of you should be held responsible for knowing.”

“We’re not going to call the cops on you,” Foggy insisted, standing as well. “It’s not like you’ve gone around on a killing spree, Karen. C’mon. Right, Matt?”

Matt didn’t reply, and that concerned Foggy.

“Matt?”

“This wasn’t the first,” Matt said, his face stony.

Foggy blinked. “What?”

Karen was out the door before the words clicked in Foggy’s mind.

 

____________

 

She knew this would never last. She knew, and yet she couldn’t help but hold out hope, to remain in her little corner of denial that this one good thing would remain unmarred.

Her hands shook as she pulled out the garbage bag of bloody clothes, the knife, from her desk. Matt could _smell it_ , oh god. Foggy was in front of her desk within moments. Matt was hovering at the doorway of Foggy’s office.

“Talk to me, Karen,” Foggy said. “Matt may have his stupid sixth sense, but he isn’t a mind reader.”

Karen was beyond words now. She sniffed and kept piling things into her purse, as much as she could reasonably leave with.

“Karen, we won’t call the police,” Matt said. “Unless you’re planning to kill anyone else, all we want to do is figure out what is going on.”

Despair wracked her heart, and she pointedly ignored him as she continued emptying her desk.

“Really, Matt?” Foggy snapped.

Matt didn’t even have to decency to wince. “Telling her any differently would be unethical. Client confidentiality doesn’t cover premeditated murder or plans to commit future felonies.”

Something snapped within her at Matt’s infuriating soft, calm, pitying tone. “Fuck you, Matt. You might be able to moralize around this because you’re a self-sacrificing superhero whose methods stop short of murder. But for the rest of us...we don’t get that choice,” she spat, her movements become more and more frenzied as she stuffed papers and knickknacks into her purse. “We have to survive without superpowers, without hoping the hero will swoop in and save the day. And yeah, sometimes that means kill or be killed.”

“Karen!” Matt grabbed her wrist as her hand reached for her cup of pens. At first Karen was startled that Matt knew where her hand was, then her expression grew stormy.

“Let go of me,” Karen hissed. Matt immediately released her and stepped back, looking hurt.

“Everyone has the right to protect themselves, by all means necessary,” he told her. “I don’t think you want to kill anyone else, and I don’t blame you for protecting yourself.”

“No? You should. I’m a fucking walking death sentence. Danny? Ben? Fisk’s assistant...David. _Fuck_.” She pounded the desk and found that her legs were shaking. She covered her mouth, unsure whether she was stifling a sob or bile as she sank into her chair.

“Fisk’s...assistant?”

Karen couldn’t bring herself to immediately answer Foggy. She gulped down a few breaths, willing herself to stop trembling. God, what she would give for the floor to open up and swallow her. Hell would be a blessing compared to watching her two best friends lose every ounce of love and trust they once had for her.

But there they were, between her and the exit. And she no longer had the strength to run.

“I shot him,” she choked out. “He-he kidnapped me after, after Ben and I visited Fisk’s mom. There was a gun on the table, and I…” A hysterical laugh escaped her mouth. “Fuck, he was stupider than David.”

“Did Fisk think Ben was the one who killed his assistant, too?” Matt asked. He had maneuvered himself to sit on the far edge of her desk. He wasn’t facing her, not totally. Foggy was staying back. She could tell they were both carefully making themselves non-threatening. Like when they first met her. Karen shook her head, using the heel of her palm to wipe away the tears standing in her eyes.

“If Fisk knew, he’d’ve gone after me long before he was caught. He wouldn’t have just killed Ben.”

“Jesus.” Foggy’s hand dragged down his face. “You could have told us, Karen.”

“And what? You two were having your _fight_.” She had a little thrill of satisfaction at their simultaneous flinches, but it quickly turned to bitterness. “And with Ben gone...I didn’t know who to trust.”

Neither of the boys responded. Karen rubbed her temples.

“To answer your question, Matt,” she said, her voice steadier. It was more out of exhaustion than any sort of emotional stability. “I’m not planning on killing anyone else. But I can’t promise I’ll never do it again.” She inhaled. “And I can leave. I won’t be one of the monsters in this city that you have to track down.”

“Is that what you think you are, Karen?” Matt said, his tone sad. “One of the monsters I track down?”

“I’ve killed two people, Matt. Directly. In cold blood.”

“Defending yourself against people who wanted to kill you. Or worse.” Matt’s throat moved as he swallowed. “You’re right, not everyone has the luxury of defending themselves without lethal force. I don’t think you’re a monster for surviving.”

“And neither do I,” Foggy added. Karen felt torn as she saw the twin looks of determination on their faces.

“Am I supposed to think you two are just going to sweep this under the table?” she demanded.

“No,” Foggy told her. “The police might still start sniffing around, especially if Nugenex realizes their hitman failed. Did they know your name?”

“No. I—I gave David an alias.”

Matt nodded. “Well, I still have to advise you not to commit another crime.”

“Says the vigilante,” Foggy muttered.

“I’m just saying she shouldn’t clean out her attacker’s truck and bring it down to Sal’s Used Car Dealership on 11th Avenue between 47th and 48th. I’m saying that it would be illegal to sell it to them because they don’t check registrations or verify ownership in any other way. I would also counsel Karen that it would be a bad idea to let Sal know she’s only asking a quarter of the value, even though the truck is in perfect working condition.”

Matt managed to keep a straight face, and Karen just stared at him, dumbfounded.

“Why are you—?” Her voice broke.

Matt removed his glasses, fiddling with them in his lap as he leaned towards her slightly. His eyes were downcast, but he was facing her more directly. “I think maybe we need to be a little bit better about telling...about being honest with each other.” He shrugged. “Most felonies aside.”

She smiled crookedly at him, and upon realizing that he couldn’t see it on top of everything else that had just happened, Karen promptly burst into tears.

Foggy got to her first. He hovered for a moment, and Karen didn’t have the heart to push him away when he slowly pulled her towards his shoulder. She hardly noticed another pair of hands helping to guide her off the chair and onto the floor under the window. She hardly felt anything except pain and the sobs threatening to rip her lungs to shreds. Everything else...everything else was the two bodies sheltering her as she fell apart.

They didn’t stop holding her, not even when she screamed herself hoarse. When she had nothing left to give, when the irrational urge to tear into her own chest and rip out her heart ebbed away with her cries, the quiet was almost unbearable. But she no longer had the energy to speak, let alone keep sobbing.

That’s when Foggy started humming.

She didn’t notice at first. Her head was disjointed from reality, grasping for that last refuge of numbness. But the vibrations broke through her fugue state, emanating from the chest her head was resting against. Faintly, her conscious mind told her it was beginning to sound familiar. Then Matt started joining in the humming. The tune was unmistakable now.

“Really?” she croaked. She even managed a hint of snark in her wrecked voice.

“ _Now that she's back from that soul vacation_ ,” Foggy belting out in his most off-key rendition, “ _Tracing her way through the constellation, hey-ey-eeyy_ …”

Karen then found out that Matt’s voice was even worse than Foggy’s. “ _She checks out Mozart while she does Tae-Bo, reminds me that there's room to grow, hey-eeeeeyy!_ ”

“Unbelievable.”

They sang even louder. It was grinding, horrible, ridiculously bad singing. She joined in when they reached the chorus.

Even after screaming herself hoarse, she was better than both of them.

“ _But tell me, did the wind sweep you off your feet? Did you finally get the chance to dance along the light of day, and head back to the Milky Way? And tell me, did Venus blow your mind? Was it everything you wanted to find? And did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there?_ ”

“Yet another dastardly secret uncovered,” Foggy declared. He laughed, hugging her tightly. “What the hell, Page?”

She shrugged, and slowly pulled away. “Sorry,” she replied, the word not just encompassing her hiding her singing abilities from the two of them.

She felt gentle fingers at her temple, running down through her hair.

“It’s okay,” Matt told her.

She reached up and stilled his movements. His fingers froze under hers.

“Is it?” she asked. After all of this, after all they’ve been through, and now this...she wouldn’t blame him if he thought it was too much. He was Daredevil. She was poking around in dangerous nests herself. What if something...something like Fisk happened again?

“We’ll figure it out,” Foggy said. “Together.”

Matt made a face. “God, that sounds corny when you say it like that.”

“Thanks for ruining the moment, Daredevil.” He reached over Karen and punched Matt lightly in the shoulder.

“I’m just saying that it sounds like we’re near the end of some group rom-com.”

“You think we should have a team name, like the Avengers?” he mused.

Karen couldn’t help but crack a grin.

“She smiled!” Foggy announced triumphantly. “I think our work here is done, my kung fu compadre.”

“Not until we get food. Karen hasn’t eaten since your eggs.”

Karen blinked. “Okay, that _is_ weird.”

“I know, right?” Foggy smirked.

Matt was the one to run down to pick up food from the Chinese joint down the street. By the time he got back, Karen was reluctant to pry herself from Foggy’s comfortable embrace. They sat in the conference room, and Karen finally felt like her hunger tamed her nausea as she listened to Foggy detail more of the boys’ college exploits. When they were done, the three of them walked to Matt’s place and curled up in his bed. The three of them talked and talked about nothing in particular.

At one point Matt got up and showed Karen his suit, but afterwards they went right back to talking about Foggy once trying (and failing) to trick Matt into pouring orange juice into his cereal by switching the juice and milk cartons. Foggy defended his cruel actions against the disabled by saying that Matt had started it. Matt had, apparently, filled Foggy’s bed with shaving cream. Matt denied that this was the beginning of their two-month battle, saying that the reason he did _that_ was because Foggy had downloaded the audio of a Harlequin novel onto Matt’s tape recorder for his Constitutional Law class. When pressed, neither of them could remember who actually started the prank war.

Karen eventually lost her voice entirely at the end of the night, but it was by laughing instead of screaming.

Everything wasn’t rosy and great. She still had evidence to get rid of. The nightmares were bound to return en force. But now, she didn’t want to think about it. Now, she had Matt and Foggy to be barriers to the real world consequences until she felt some semblance of strength again.

Their solid presence surrounding her reminded Karen that when she eventually had to think about it, she would have help.

 

____________

 

_Yes, the title is a Drops of Jupiter lyric, no I did not initially intend for this to turn into a songfic. Sue me. _Edit (a week later): I'm an idiot and didn't even notice Drops of Jupiter was playing in the scene where Matt and Foggy meet in college. Just rewatched Nelson v Murdock and like, Foggy plays it on his laptop when Matt walks in. My subconscious probably knew as I was plodding along in this story. Whelp. Even more Matt x Foggy implications, you're welcome!_ I also stole the nutmeg acid thing from Elementary’s “Adventure of the Nutmeg Concoction” episode. Sue me._

_Also fun story, got into a spat over the legality of fanfiction with my romantic partner who is a lawyer so totally let that fuel certain parts of this fic. Out of spite. So sue me again! Ha! Viva la revolucion._

_FYI...Deborah Ann Woll[can sing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Vz59QwURSA). Charlie Cox [cannot](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2jwaouPoEc). It was established that Foggy can’t sing in the first episode, so it’s canon. They are all nerds either way._


End file.
